SHARP

Not by armor and not by strength but by the spirit says my friend David who has studied the Hebrew to supply the deficiency of a motto for the Anglo-Saxon heraldric shield and crest It is nice but I prefer not to be so definitively principled in this matter the empty scroll possibly serves to show a less limited potential Azure, a pheon argent on a border or, eight torteaux, as Burke’s General Armory has the shield. Azure is the background to the argent, silver, pheon, a curious device: an equilateral triangle resting on its point like a “V” but gouged out from the top by the screwlike cone which has worked its way two-thirds to the point, so that the triangle looks like a big arrow-head on a stubby pointed spiraled shaft. This is surrounded by a border of gold, and on the border eight small circles of guiles, I think, a red. I don’t know what the eight torteaux mean but the rest is clear to the open eye. The crest, and eagle’s head erased azure ducally gorged or holding in the mouth a pheon argent. An eagle’s head on an azure background with a golden crown around its throat and the silver pheon in its beak.

25 April 1977